NFL set to close door on Spygate, change playoffs

After months of questions over the Pats' videotaping of opponents, Bill Belichick finally may be able to move on, thanks to the NFL's competition committee. Travis Lindquist/Getty Images

INDIANAPOLIS -- Spygate may be the story that never ends in the minds of fans and the media, but I'd say the NFL's Competition Committee is definitively over it. The league's governing body in terms of rules and regulations has been known to debate the most arcane issues for days or even weeks on end. The committee's attempts to define what constitutes illegal contact a few years back wound up just shy of involving forensic science.

So I guess while I wasn't expecting something on the scope of the Warren Commission, I was a bit surprised Thursday by what I heard from some high-profile members of the eight-man Competition Committee. They stood up before the media at the NFL scouting combine and declared that they heard everything they needed to hear about the Patriots' videotaping scandal in a 90-minute Thursday morning briefing from league commissioner Roger Goodell. As part of its regularly scheduled meeting at the nearby Westin Hotel, the committee heard the details of the league's investigation from a four-man contingent that included Goodell, league in-house counsel Jeff Pash, and Ray Anderson and Ron Hill, the NFL's top two vice presidents of football operations.

The committee's consensus after hearing Goodell & Co. explain their work? A rather resounding "Nothing to see here, folks. Let's move along.''

Competition committee co-chair Rich McKay, the Falcons team president, called Spygate "yesterday's news.'' Another committee member, Colts president Bill Polian, said: "I think it's fair to say we [as a committee] were satisfied with the explanation, satisfied with what was done. It's behind us. It's time to move forward.'' Giants president/co-owner John Mara, a relative newcomer to the committee, added his emphatic thoughts as well, saying, "I'm just tired of hearing about it at this point. It's been thoroughly investigated and thoroughly handled.''

Take that, Matt Walsh. Who needs your potential smoking-gun of a video tape collection? Take that Sen. Arlen Specter. Who needs you poking your Congressional nose in where it doesn't belong? Apparently no one on the Competition Committee. When a longtime Patriots antagonist like Polian has no appetite left for Spygate, you know which way the wind blows within the league office.

In fairness, Tennessee head coach Jeff Fisher, co-chair along with McKay, did take pains to call Spygate "an ongoing investigation,'' in light of Walsh's role in the saga. When juxtaposing that with McKay's "yesterday's news'' characterization, it sounded like the committee was at least attempting to view any potential Walsh testimony as a separate entity compared to New England's taping of defensive signals in its Week 1 game at the Jets.

McKay told me later that there was no debate in the room regarding Goodell's decision to destroy the six video tapes and notes that the Patriots turned over to the league. He added that he "fully understood'' why the league did away with the evidence once Goodell gave his explanation for the move.

I've been saying this since mid-September, but it bears repeating once again: The NFL just wants this story to go away, and the sooner the better. Nothing about the controversy makes the league look good. The problem is, the lack of transparency in the league's investigation gave plenty of room for the inevitable conspiracy theorists and unwittingly kept the story alive. After listening to the Competition Committee members talk about their lack of interest in Spygate on Thursday, there's no doubt they have fallen in line with the league's thinking.

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